Payment
by Verse
Summary: What if Saruman kept his promise to Grima?
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I own neither Grima, Eowyn, or Saruman. For entertainment only, no profit is being made.  
  
-Warnings: AU I saw some other fics that had been written in response to a "What if Saruman had kept his promise" challenge, and this story is the result.   
  
Grima had long cultivated a genuine talent for waiting. Not the same as patience, this ability allowed him to spin plans far into the future, beyond the endurance of most men. He could wait,  
maneuvering the players around him with a chosen word or one thing left unsaid, easing them toward a purpose so far into the future even seers might squint to view it. But now all the game pieces had been taken away from him. Now he sat in a dark tower, waiting for a mad wizard to find one last use for him. He sat quietly, waiting to his next order to come from the one who sat across the table, lost in old books and new maps.  
  
"Come." Saruman offered no explanation, simply stood from his chair and started across the room. Grima rose and followed him up the stairs, twisting higher and higher into the tower.  
  
The door opened with a click; Saruman did not enter the room, simply opened the door and gestured inside. Grima stared disbelieving at the figure on the bed. He stood in the doorway,  
unable to enter the room. "What is the meaning of this?" The words caught in his throat, the usually silken tones tearing under theshock of the vision before him.  
  
Saruman stepped into the room and said, "Payment...for services rendered. As requested, Eowyn of Rohan lays before you." The voice insinuated itself into his mind, twisting and claiming his thoughts.   
  
The voice urged his feet to step over the threshold and move to the side of his master. Grima clenched his teeth at the intrusion and forced a smile to his lips. Quickly, he bowed his head. Saruman was as gifted at reading faces as minds and Grima knew the expression would be seen for what it was--false.  
  
"She will sleep the night through, remembering nothing of what has passed. And dream no dreams," he said significantly.  
  
"But if she wakes?" Grima asked shortly.  
  
"She is not going to wake up." Saruman coldly lifted one of her arms only to let it fall back to the bed and she did not flinch. He tossed the sheets back and she made no move to cover herself.  
  
"You killed her," he whispered.  
  
"Not dead you fool." Saruman seized his wrist and forced his fingers to the side of her neck. Her pulse throbbed beneath his hand. Not a frantic beat, but a calm and steady rhythm, unknowing of those around her.

"Bewitched?"  
  
"Nothing so dramatic." Saruman sneered as he lifted a glass vial, swirling the liquid inside. "Even wizards have methods beyond magic."  
  
Grima knelt silently at her statuesque form. "Why?"  
  
Saruman shrugged calmly. "If she were simply tied her screams might draw the orcs."  
  
Grima wavered, sickened at the implications of his master's words. He leaned against the side of the bed and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. But the images had already risen behind his lids. He did not know what he had expected. Before him lay the payment he had demanded. If Saruman had conjured her to willingness it would have been no different. Sleepwalking or sleeping, it was all the same, he could never have her waking, reaching for him  
knowingly, his name a whisper in the dark.  
  
"You have until the sun rises." The tall form turned and left the room.  
  
With Saruman gone Grima breathed more easily. He lifted his head to look upon the lady before him. Automatically, he picked the sheet up from the floor where it had been tossed and covered her against the cold. She looked like a child, tired out after a hard day of climbing trees and skipping stones. One foot dangled carelessly off the side of the bed until Grima slipped it beneath the blankets, feeling the delicate bones of her ankle against his palm.  
  
At this innocent action, a voice hissed in his mind, "She has possessed you utterly these many years. Waking, dreaming, bidden and unbidden her image rises before your mind's eye, leaving you helpless and shaking in the wake of memory or fancy. What harm would there be? Exorcise your demon. She has driven an entire world to wreck with her refusal of you. Traitor, take your payment."  
  
Grima reached out hesitantly in an answer to the voice and brushed his fingers across her cheek. He comforted himself with the thought that he had touched her face once before and she had not  
turned away. Her eyes had closed, mind warring on itself. But she had not drawn back.  
  
She would not draw back tonight.  
  
He jerked his hand back quickly at the thought, still fearful she would wake. Yet, the only motion was that of her breath. Her throat flashed, shadows flickering. There was no change in her face, calmer now than he had ever seen in her waking hours. He briefly missed the wariness that always reminded him of a young mare wavering between fear and trust in a new rider. Waiting to begentled by a calming hand.  
  
He trembled, throat constricting painfully. She would never know.

"My Lady?" he whispered gently, as though afraid of waking her. But even as he spoke the words, he knew it was not his Lady there on the bed. Though her body haunted him, it was her mind which maddened him. The cold assurance and iron resolve so absent in the form before him was what had captured his imagination. This silent, passive thing was not the Eowyn who practiced swordplay with a fierce grace or solved his riddles with a quick wit.  
  
He sat down in a chair, slipped his hand in hers, and watched her sleep.


	2. Morning

In the darkness, all places seem to be underground. Grima had sat in that darkness all the night through, alternately cursing his cowardice and mocking his pretense at honor. Through the night Eowyn had laid unnaturally still, never tossing in her sleep nor pulling her hand from his. When the sun broke, he could see the room was very high in the tower.

She woke with a start, as though she could hear the sun rising. "Milord, what are you doing here?" Her tone held a terror, and she jerked her hand away from him. His heart constricted, her fear was not from finding herself locked in a strange room, stolen from her home as she slept, but at finding him beside her when she awoke.

Grima stood stiffly and stepped backward a few paces before bowing. "Merely watching you, my Lady. Did you expect otherwise?" Her eyes did not leave his face, but he saw her hand moving about her neck. Finding her gown still in place she relaxed slightly.

"This is a dream," she whispered fiercely. "This place is strange to me, so it must be a dream." Her words were those of a stubborn child, certain the horror would not exist if only it were not believed.

Typical Rohirrim logic, he thought. "It would so appear," he agreed mildly. This could prove interesting.

"So why are you here? Why have you crept into my mind?" she spat.

"That is for you to answer." He spread his hands and inclined his head in a mocking gesture. "Assign me my part and I shall play it to the best of my ability. Am I to be your nightmare...or something else? For as you view me, so I become." Perhaps the truest words you have spoken these many years, he thought. Her eyes were still faintly glassy from whatever drug she had been dosed with the night before. Yet even with her mind clouded and her strength robbed it was still Eowyn, not the empty form that had lain on the bed before him. Grima spun from her quickly, twisting his hands beneath his cloak. The fragile control he held was slipping, already frayed from the long night he had spent at her side.

"Snake, turn and face me." At her words he stilled his expression to calmness and turned on his heel. He watched as she struggled to stir up against the bed frame. "You are my dream, and so you must do my bidding." Her words were thoughtful.

"I am my Lady's servant in all things"

A smile played across her lips and she appeared to savor his answer for a few moments. Then, briefly, her courage seemed to falter. "This is not real?" she asked with a sudden uncertainty.

Grima made no move closer to the bed. "How real is your mind? How real your imagination?" he challenged. She shook her head. Her voice was quiet when it came. "Never before real enough to conjure this." She regarded him for a moment and reached her decision. "Kiss me."

At her words, he returned to her side and stood over her. She met his gaze levelly, as though daring his bravery to be less than hers. Slowly, Grima bent over her and placed his lips against her forehead. He breathed in the scent of her hair, rosemary and cool night.

"Again," she ordered.

In the end he was ever her creature.

Her eyes fluttered shut at the sensations, but he was unable to deny himself the sight of her. He kissed her again and when they parted she chided him in a whisper, "Lovers are supposed to close their eyes when they kiss."

"Forgive me, my Lady, you must teach me such things." She lifted his fingers to the laces of her gown and he obediently untied them, slipping a hand beneath the thin fabric. She was right, his mind insisted, it is a dream. It is a dream, he thought as she shivered under his hands, it is a dream, but it does not matter. Ever a quick study, he learned her well. Soon she was arching beneath his touch. Too soon, too soon, his mind cried out, this moment should be endless. No, he corrected himself, it has been too long, too much waiting had driven them both to madness.

When they were both still she said fretfully, "You will be gone when I awake."

"Perhaps."

She pulled herself up and propped her chin on her hand, studying him carefully. "And will I remember my dream?"

"I cannot say, my Lady." A frown gathered on her face at his words and he lifted a hand to smooth it away. "Perhaps you would prefer that I remember it for you." "

Yes, I believe I would like that very much." She lay down again and her eyes slipped closed. "I wonder what I would dream of if I fell asleep during a dream," she murmured.

Outside he could make out the half-imagined sounds of a battle forming. The world was falling to ruin about them, collapsing beneath the weight of his treachery, he flattered himself. At his side Eowyn shifted slightly in her sleep. Yes, he had been well paid indeed.


End file.
